Where the hits are streaming

There’s been a lot of discussion lately about how Netflix is in the process of moving from a DVD distribution company to primarily a streaming service. The question, though, is how close this future truly is.

In order to assess their progress, I decided to look at how many of the 2010 top box office earners were on the service. Figuring that we also needed a yardstick to compare Netflix offerings against, I took the top three online streaming services and got the data for each of them (generally speaking, rentals are around $3.99 to $4.99 and purchases seem to be around $14.99).

First, I pulled up the Box Office data and then put each title in the search engine for each of the services. I also looked up DVD availability from both Amazon and Netflix to ensure we had a yardstick we could measure against in terms of online vs. offline availability of titles. The assumption here was that some box office hit might not be available in either form due to the fact that they were recently released. I also made a decision to reject titles that are available on a pre-order basis as it is not yet possible to watch them. For future reference, all this data was pulled together the third week of January 2011.

2010: Box Office Winners availability

Once I did all this work I had a table for the 2010 box office numbers winners and it looked like this:

Rank

Title

Netflix

Amazon

iTunes

Vudu

DVD

1

Toy Story 3

No

Rental only

Yes

Yes

Yes

2

Alice in Wonderland

Yes

No

Purchase only

Purchase only

Yes

3

Iron Man 2

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

4

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

5

Inception

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

6

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1

No

No

No

No

No

7

Despicable Me

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

8

Shrek Forever After

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

9

How to Train Your Dragon

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

10

Tangled

No

No

No

No

No

11

The Karate Kid

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

12

Clash of the Titans

No

Purchase only

No

Yes

Yes

13

Grown Ups

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

14

Tron Legacy

No

No

No

No

No

15

Megamind

No

No

No

No

No

16

Little Fockers

No

No

No

No

No

17

The Last Airbender

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

18

True Grit

No

No

No

No

No

19

Shutter Island

Yes

Purchase only

Purchase only

Purchase only

Yes

20

The Other Guys

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

21

Salt

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

22

Jackass 3D

No

No

No

No

No

23

Valentine’s Day

No

No

No

No

Yes

24

Robin Hood

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

25

The Expendables

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

26

Due Date

No

No

No

No

No

27

The Chronicle of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader

No

No

No

No

No

28

Date Night

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

29

Sex and the City 2

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

30

The Social Network

No

Yes

Purchase only

Purchase only

Yes

31

The Book of Eli

No

No

No

No

Yes

32

The Town

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

33

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

34

Red

No

No

No

No

No

35

Percy Jackson & The Oplympians: The Lightning Thief

No

No

No

No

Yes

36

Paranormal Activity 2

No

No

No

No

Yes

37

Yogi Bear

No

No

No

No

No

38

Eat Pray Love

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

39

Unstoppable

No

No

No

No

No

40

Dear John

Yes

Purchase only

Purchase only

Purchase only

Yes

41

The A-team

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

42

Knight & Day

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

43

Black Swan

No

No

No

No

No

44

Dinner for Schmucks

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

45

The Fighter

No

No

No

No

No

46

The Bounty Hunter

Yes

No

No

No

Yes

47

The Tourist

No

No

No

No

No

48

Diary of a Wimpy Kid

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

49

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

No

Rental only

Yes

Yes

Yes

50

A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

51

The Last Song

Yes

No

Purchase only

Purchase only

Yes

52

The Wolfman

No

No

No

No

Yes

53

Get him to the Greek

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

54

Resident Evil: Afterlife

No

Purchase only

Purchase only

Purchase only

Yes

55

Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married Too

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

56

Tooth Fairy

No

No

No

No

Yes

57

Secretariat

No

No

No

No

Yes

58

Easy A

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

59

Takers

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

60

Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’hoole

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

61

Life as We Know It

No

Yes

No

No

No

62

Letters to Juliet

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

63

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

64

Predators

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

65

Hot Tub Time Machine

No

No

Purchase only

Purchase only

Yes

66

Kick-Ass

No

Purchase only

Purchase only

No

Yes

67

The King’s Speech

No

No

No

No

No

68

Killers

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

69

Saw 3D

No

Yes

No

No

Yes

70

Cop Out

No

No

No

No

Yes

71

Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

72

Edge of Darkness

No

No

No

No

Yes

73

Death at a Funeral

Yes

Purchase only

Purchase only

Purchase only

Yes

74

Step-Up 3D

No

Yes

No

No

Yes

75

The Last Exorcism

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

76

Legion

Yes

Purchase only

Purchase only

Purchase only

Yes

77

The Crazies

Yes

No

No

No

Yes

78

Gulliver’s Travels

No

No

No

No

No

79

Burlesque

No

No

No

No

No

80

For Colored Girls

No

No

No

No

Yes

81

The Back-up Plan

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

82

Vampires Suck

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

83

The American

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

84

Green Zone

No

No

No

No

Yes

85

Marmaduke

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

86

Devil

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

87

Hereafter

No

No

No

No

No

88

When in Rome

Yes

No

Purchase only

Purchase only

Yes

89

Love and Other Drugs

No

No

No

No

No

90

She’s Out of My League

No

No

No

No

Yes

91

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

92

Charlie St. Cloud

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

93

Morning Glory

No

No

No

No

No

94

Daybreakers

No

Purchase only

Purchase only

Purchase only

Yes

95

How Do You Know

No

No

No

No

No

96

Nanny McPhee Returns

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

97

The Switch

No

No

No

No

No

98

Brooklyn’s Finest

Yes

No

Purchase only

No

Yes

99

Machete

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

100

Ramona and Beezus

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Aggregate Rental data

When you tally it up, the rental chart looks as follows:

Netflix

Amazon

iTunes

Vudu

DVD

Top 10

1

7

7

7

8

Top 25

2

14

14

14

17

top 50

4

25

25

25

34

Top 100

10

48

46

46

74

The first thing one notices here is that Netflix seems to have a long way to go before having any claim to strength in that particular arena. With only 9 percent of the top 100 2010 movies, Netflix seems to come on the short end of the stick when it comes to making streams of box office winners online. In a future post, I will examine whether this is because their strength is more in older titles than in recent ones but, as far as the data currently show, the subscription model offered by Netflix would probably have a hard time fighting with a premium cable TV movie channel.

The story gets more interesting when one starts looking at the Video on Demand data for services like Amazon on demand, iTunes, and Vudu. My selection of those particular services was largely due to the fact that they are available in systems that can connect to your television. For example Amazon is available on the Roku box, iTunes is available on AppleTV, and Vudu is available on the Boxee box.

What I consider to be the most striking finding in this is the relative consistency of offerings across the board. None of the VoD players seem to have any particular advantage over the other. All of them batted in the 45-50 percent range, as far as the 2010 hits are concerned. By comparison, just under 75 percent of the movies were available on DVD at the time I did this research, giving DVDs a 1/3rd advantage over VoD at this time. One can only hope that the trend will go to that gap closing over the next few years.

Sales Data

Another interesting point is the closing of the gap between DVD and Vod when it comes to availability of titles on an ownership basis:

Amazon

iTunes

Vudu

DVD

Top 10

6

8

8

8

Top 25

15

16

17

18

top 50

27

29

30

35

Overall

56

60

57

75

Here, the data seems to show increased availability of titles on an ownership basis as opposed to a rental one. The VoD services performed 10 percent better on availability, coming much closer to the number of titles offered over DVD.

Conclusion

While Netflix has been heralded as the leader in online streaming, the reality on the ground is much more complex. The Netflix model is predicated on an all you can eat model but if what you want to eat is a movie that was in the top 100 at the box office last year, viewers are left with only crumbs. The rental model offered by other internet based streaming companies is more in line with the traditional video on demand offerings available on cable television and the data seems to highlight that Hollywood is more comfortable with that model than it is with the Netflix one. This could present a strategic challenge for Netflix as it tries to negotiate more streaming contracts.

While DVD is still the king of the roost, the gap between DVD and online streams is slowly closing. The list I’ve created here can serve as a baseline against data next year to assess whether more titles will be made available. There also appears to be a preference in the film industry towards making titles available for sale instead of rent. I believe that this may be a short-sighted view as rental models can generate more income over the long run. It will be fascinating to see how all this develops.

I didn’t include redbox because I wanted to focus on streaming as the model. The only reason I have DVD availability is as a stand-in for other means (RedBox, Blockbuster, local video store, direct purchase) to provide a yardstick as to what is generally considered “available”. My assumption is that if a title isn’t available on DVD, it probably is OK for it to not be available on streaming yet. This assumption is due to the fact that I didn’t want the discussion to be about potential NEW release windows but rather about matching existing ones…

What would you compare Netflix to then? Without a baseline, it’s hard to say. What this data indicates is that online streaming is coming of age but Netflix has a long way to go before its model is accepted by Hollywood.

Great article, Tristan. I believe Netflix is more interested in TV content than movies for streaming. Its data regarding about 15 minutes streamed per month by the average subscribers suggests viewers opt to stream a TV episode compared to a 90-minute movie. But that could also mean there aren’t any movies available worth streaming … as your study suggests. Erik

I count 10 yeses in the NetFlix column. Did your spreadsheet miscount? That aside, excellent analysis. I checked CinemaNow and got essentially the same number, so it’s clear that title availability is pretty much the same across non-subscription services. It’s also interesting to note that some titles (Percy Jackson, Tooth Fairy, etc.) used to be available for streaming from CinemaNow and others but are no longer available because they’ve gone into the HBO VOD holdback window.

You were right. I corrected it. I suspect that CinemaNow would probably end up with the same movies as iTunes, Amazon, and Vudu… The results on those seem pretty consistent, highlighting that there is hardly any discernible differences between them.

I can handle the delay of movies of that came out a year ago. There are plenty of older titles that I need to catch up on. What rubs me the wrong way is why top 10 movies from 3, 5, and even 10 years ago are not available. I just looked at the top 10 box office grossing movies of 2008, which is more than 2 years ago now… how many of those 10 movies are available for instantwatch? ZERO. I decided to roll the clock back further, and then looked at the top 10 grossing movies of 2006, all movies from 4 to 5 years ago, and guess how many are available for instant watch? Just one! No Night at the Museum (which is all over basic cable), no Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Man’s Chest, no DaVinci Code, no Superman Returns, no Cars. I’m not commenting on the quality of these movies, just their audience appeal. Rolling back to the mid/late 90s, Instant Watch doesn’t even have Titanic, the biggest movie of all time and by no means a recent movie in any way, shape, or form.

This is the biggest hurdle for Netflix to overcome, in my opinion. When I have people over to the house and they first start looking at my Roku and what is available on Netflix, they are interested. Then they start looking up movies in the last 5 to 10 years that they remember (a lot of them on that list above), and when they see relatively few of their favorite movies listed, they get turned off pretty quickly.

Does anyone know why popular movies from 5 years ago, which aren’t really hot titles any more, aren’t available on Netflix streaming yet? Are they too expensive?

I subscribe to Dish. Strangely, I don’t like, nor do I watch, recently made movies. Perhaps TCM should start a streaming VOD service. The Netflix “No” list, I wouldn’t watch. I never had to be at the box office to see the new hot release although I was there when “Gone With The Wind” first came to town. Everyone in the theater stood up and clapped when Scarlet shot the yankee between the eyes. That is a movie..

I wasn’t accounting for taste when I put the list together. Ultimately, the box office is decided by what the majority of people want to see. A lot of the movies on the list are movies I personally don’t care about but the majority of the viewing public has voted with their dollars and shown they’d want to watch those movies. So it seems like what is offered is not necessarily in line with what people generally want.

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I didn’t include redbox because I wanted to focus on streaming as the model. The only reason I have DVD availability is as a stand-in for other means (RedBox, Blockbuster, local video store, direct purchase) to provide a yardstick as to what is generally considered “available”. My assumption is that if a title isn’t available on DVD, it probably is OK for it to not be available on streaming yet. This assumption is due to the fact that I didn’t want the discussion to be about potential NEW release windows but rather about matching existing ones…

kk_ck

Netflix is a subscription video-on-demand. Rest are not. Rest are only digital rentals / physical rentals. This is an apples-oranges comparison.

What would you compare Netflix to then? Without a baseline, it’s hard to say. What this data indicates is that online streaming is coming of age but Netflix has a long way to go before its model is accepted by Hollywood.

Jimmy

Maybe you should compare it the most glaringly obvious service. Hulu Plus.

Hulu Plus is primarily TV-centric. This study was focused on movies. Maybe I should do a similar piece on the top TV shows last year.

Egruenwedel

Great article, Tristan. I believe Netflix is more interested in TV content than movies for streaming. Its data regarding about 15 minutes streamed per month by the average subscribers suggests viewers opt to stream a TV episode compared to a 90-minute movie. But that could also mean there aren’t any movies available worth streaming … as your study suggests. Erik

That’s an interesting point but if that were the case, why would one go with Netflix over Hulu Plus?

Jim Taylor

I count 10 yeses in the NetFlix column. Did your spreadsheet miscount? That aside, excellent analysis. I checked CinemaNow and got essentially the same number, so it’s clear that title availability is pretty much the same across non-subscription services. It’s also interesting to note that some titles (Percy Jackson, Tooth Fairy, etc.) used to be available for streaming from CinemaNow and others but are no longer available because they’ve gone into the HBO VOD holdback window.

You were right. I corrected it. I suspect that CinemaNow would probably end up with the same movies as iTunes, Amazon, and Vudu… The results on those seem pretty consistent, highlighting that there is hardly any discernible differences between them.

Falls Matt

I can handle the delay of movies of that came out a year ago. There are plenty of older titles that I need to catch up on. What rubs me the wrong way is why top 10 movies from 3, 5, and even 10 years ago are not available. I just looked at the top 10 box office grossing movies of 2008, which is more than 2 years ago now… how many of those 10 movies are available for instantwatch? ZERO. I decided to roll the clock back further, and then looked at the top 10 grossing movies of 2006, all movies from 4 to 5 years ago, and guess how many are available for instant watch? Just one! No Night at the Museum (which is all over basic cable), no Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Man’s Chest, no DaVinci Code, no Superman Returns, no Cars. I’m not commenting on the quality of these movies, just their audience appeal. Rolling back to the mid/late 90s, Instant Watch doesn’t even have Titanic, the biggest movie of all time and by no means a recent movie in any way, shape, or form.

This is the biggest hurdle for Netflix to overcome, in my opinion. When I have people over to the house and they first start looking at my Roku and what is available on Netflix, they are interested. Then they start looking up movies in the last 5 to 10 years that they remember (a lot of them on that list above), and when they see relatively few of their favorite movies listed, they get turned off pretty quickly.

Does anyone know why popular movies from 5 years ago, which aren’t really hot titles any more, aren’t available on Netflix streaming yet? Are they too expensive?

I’m in the process of completing an upcoming entry on this, looking at the top 10 hits since 2005 and their presence on the different services. Stay tuned 🙂

John Morgan

I subscribe to Dish. Strangely, I don’t like, nor do I watch, recently made movies. Perhaps TCM should start a streaming VOD service. The Netflix “No” list, I wouldn’t watch. I never had to be at the box office to see the new hot release although I was there when “Gone With The Wind” first came to town. Everyone in the theater stood up and clapped when Scarlet shot the yankee between the eyes. That is a movie..

I wasn’t accounting for taste when I put the list together. Ultimately, the box office is decided by what the majority of people want to see. A lot of the movies on the list are movies I personally don’t care about but the majority of the viewing public has voted with their dollars and shown they’d want to watch those movies. So it seems like what is offered is not necessarily in line with what people generally want.